All change in the journey planner:

Phew! Another busy month – if you’ve been on our website today, you may have noticed some changes. As a response to passenger feedback and requests, we’ve introduced the ability to plan a journey to or from stations near a postcode.

In the Journey Planner in either the From or To boxes, simply type in the postcode you wish to use, fill in the other From or To box with your origin or destination as appropriate, tell us when you’d like to travel, and if you want a return journey.

The system will give you a selection of stations that are near to the postcode that you’ve put in – more detail about that is available on the postcode page here. The results page will tell you how far the station is from your postcode, along with the cheapest ticket price for the times you’ve chosen to travel and the quickest available journey. Get planning now and let us know what you think here.

What’s more, the eagle-eyed amongst you may have seen that a tick box that used to say “include slower trains” now says “show fastest trains only”. What this means is that whereas before we would have filtered out journeys that may have been direct, but were slower than others, now we’ll include more journey opportunities so that you can be in control. The idea here is that some journeys that may take longer, but require less changes and are cheaper will show up. For example, a journey from London to Birmingham will now pick up journey opportunities via London Euston to Birmingham New Street with Virgin Trains, London Euston to Birmingham New Street with London Midland and London Marylebone to Birmingham Moor Street/Snow Hill with Chiltern Railways.

One of the other major changes that has been made is adding fares to the train times page. This redesigned page shows information about the journey: how many changes / if it’s on time / whether it includes a bus – alongside information about ticket prices. We’ve shortened the number of clicks it takes you before your journey details are passed on to a ticket seller so that you get the information you need quicker.

We’ve also changed the way that the website highlights the cheapest fare to make it more obvious.

Post navigation

It seems that since the change it is no longer possible to find the following information for any given journey or part thereof:

1. Name of Train Operating Company.
2. Starting and terminating points of the train.
3. Locations and times of intermediate stops.
4. Whether or not there is first class accommodation.
5. Whether or not there is on-board catering.

The information is still there – if you click on the blue i icon, in between the number of changes & the status, this gives you the same page that used to be found by clicking details. This contains all of the information that you listed above.

I’m sure it’s all fab, but all I want 99% time is to know the times of trains. I know which stations I’m going to and from. I just hope you’re not clogging up cyberspace to make this useful service slow on PC’s and Phones.

Not everyone is in your position (of knowing their stations), and we were asked us to do something to help them. We test the performance to ensure that there is no degradation in service. Our November release will be looking at improving the mobile version of our site (http://mobile.nationalrail.co.uk).

Sadly I note you are still making people walk through the back sreets of Warrington when travelling from eg Carlisle to Sheffield when changing at Preston would achieve the same timing eg 0910 Carlisle arr Sheffield at 1235 by either route but the change at Preston can only be shown by inserting “travel via Bolton”. I wonder how many people arrive at Warrington Bank Quay to discover that they have a long and completely unnecessary walk to get their connection from Warrington Central. I have emailed frequently about this problem but never received a reply so am not hopeful of a reply or a correction on this occasion either.